Sharmila Tagore's Father-in-law & Bodyline

In the recently concluded Lord's Test, intimidatory bowling was copiously used by both sides. It is useful to recall the start of this. In the days of the rampaging Australian Don Bradman, England were clueless to control him in the "Ashes" series. Their captain Douglas Jardine came up with the infamous "Bodyline" bowling consisting of bouncers bowled at the batsman's head with a packed legside field. He had Harold Larwood's extreme pace to make it effective. Larwood, a poor coal miner, had to obey the captain.

Not so the Senior Nawab of Pataudi, Sharmila's Father-in-law, who was playing for England, as at that time India was a colony. When Jardine asked him to field in the leg-trap, he flatly refused, considering Bodyline unsporting. Jardine could do nothing about him, & placed him elsewhere on the field as Pataudi was a deserving batsman for England & moreover a Nawab, whom the British were treating with kid gloves, for their own ends.

So Jardine had to content himself by snide remarks like "So Your Highness is a 'conscientious objector' (borrowing the wartime phrase) in the war against Australia!"